Sunday, January 18, 2015

I wonder if there is a more welcome phrase in all of PC gaming than these four simple words: "The tank is holding"? They mean that you have reached that point in a battle where your defensive capabilities have proven themselve capable of surviving anything the enemy can throw at them. It is the tipping point. Prior to that moment the battle is a desperate struggle for survival with an uncertain outcome. After that moment you know that they cannot kill you so it is your turn to take the initiative and find a way to kill them. Knowing that you cannot lose all that remains is find a way to win.

According to Wikipedia the use of the word "Tanking" to describe a unit or team's ability to absorb damage originated in the text based Multi User DUngeons (MUDS) of the 1990s. The concept probably reached its full potential in the Tank, Heal, Damage triumvirate of massively multi player games such as Everquest. With classes specialised in each of these roles player groups can work together to overcome PVE monsters (Raid Bosses) that are enormously more powerful than themselves. The tanking classes have special skills to keep monsters focus upon themselves and then rely on heavy armour and defensive abilities to reduce the damage sustained to a level that the healers can heal. Knowing that "the tank is holding" means that your combination of mitigation and healing is sufficient to survive the incoming damage and is a vital first step to victory.

The terminology is widely used in role playing games and real time strategy games but the principle can be applied to just about any game against computer opponents (PVE) even when the phrase "tanking" isn't commonly used. In a shooter for example once you have found a reliable piece of cover to crouch behind you are able to survive incoming fire (your tank is holding) and you can now focus on picking off opponents.

The concept of tanking is not as useful in PVP games because human players can change their tactics at will. Once it becomes obvious that they are failing to make a dent in your defences a human player is likely to try a different approach. It would be foolish to think that you have won the battle just because "your tank is holding" against one line of attack.Nevertheless the ability to survive incoming attacks is important and tanking still essential. EVE online for example uses the term "tanking" extensively to describe the defensive capability of both individual ships and of fleets in PVE and PVP online space battles. One of my favourite depictions of of "The tank is holding" comes from EVE in the Clarion Call 3 video from Rooks and Kings

The entire video is worth watching but the particularly relevant bit starts at minute 29:00. A small fleet of specialised spacecraft is taking on a much larger and in theory more powerful fleet in the opponent's home territory. The upstart intruders are using superbly co-ordinated tactics to minimise incoming damage to a level that they can repair while they whittle down the opponent fleet. In short their strategy relies on their tank holding. The vital sequence starting at minute 29:00 begins with an expletive from the pilot of their repair ship (carrier) because one of the armour repair units (reppers) that is keeping him alive burns out through over use. You can hear the despair in his voice when he tells his team what has happened. There is a short dreadful pause as it dawns on everyone that the battle is surely lost but that thought is interrupted by the explosion in the background of one of the enemies main damage dealing ships (a Moros dreadnought). Then we get the deadpan reply of the fleet commander:

"It doesn't matter. One Moros is dead. The other one is held zero cap" (This means its guns are neutered and cannot fire).

Thursday, January 08, 2015

In an idle moment I checked our families monthly broadband statistics and I was quite surprised by the numbers.

The last time I actively perused these figure was perhaps eight years ago when we had a 30Gb monthly allowance and I remember that our usage rarely ever exceeded 10Gb per month. Internet speeds have increased a lot since then, the web has become more data rich, game downloads have become bigger, my teenage kids have developed insatiable appetites for online connectivity and of course Netflix has happened. Taking all of this into account I think that I would have expected a ten fold increase in internet usage - perhaps 100Gb typical usage per month.

Here are the numbers for the last few months:

Broadband Usage History

Billing
period

Downloaded

Uploaded

Total

07 Dec - 06 Jan

336.66 GB

69.10 GB

405.76 GB

07 Nov - 06 Dec

218.61 GB

75.39 GB

294.00 GB

07 Oct - 06 Nov

154.22 GB

76.86 GB

231.08 GB

07 Sep - 06 Oct

182.66 GB

493.38 GB

676.04 GB

07 Aug - 06 Sep

196.54 GB

196.62 GB

393.16 GB

Wow. I didn't expect the numbers to be that high. A monthly average usage of 400Gb peaking to 676Gb last September.

The large upload numbers are surprising but I can explain them. My wife is a very keen photographer and in August we started to use cloud storage. The high uploads for August and September were the initial uploads of the archive and the ongoing monthly uploads are mainly new photos.

Our normal monthly downloads are 150Gb to 200Gb but it looks like we watched a lot of extra movies on Netflix during the Christmas Holidays (plus I may have bought a few big games).

Saturday, January 03, 2015

It is with much sadness I note that Dragon Age Inquisition has opted to move away from the user programmed AI "Tactics" of its predecessors.

The original Dragon age introduced an extremely innovative system called "Tactics" which allowed players to programme the AI of their party members. I do actually mean programme. This wildly ambitious system had full blown decision and flow control structures. You could programme in a wide array of behaviours such as "Attack Alastairs target and if that target has heavy armour use Shatter Armour" or "If any character has less than 10% health then cast a healing spell" or "Freeze a target with spell 1 and then cast a rock to shatter them with spell 2". It was a deep and sophisticated system that encouraged players to experiment.

Dragon Age II refined the system further but the latest episode "Inquisition" has abandoned it and instead offers a few very limited options for tweaking your party members' behaviour. You can prioritise or exclude the use of certain skills. You can set sliders to determine how often your characters take potions and you can tell your characters whether to defend the controlled character or assist them in attacking a given target. That is it.

I guess I know why Bioware chose this approach. It is much simpler to understand and to use and I wouldn't be surprised if this simplified approach gives pretty similar results to the old tactics approach. Much as I loved the old tactics system I have to admit that it didn't really work all that well. AI is hard to programme and even with all that flexibility it wasn't really feasible to programme complex characters such as a spell casting Mage or a backstabbing rogue. If I am honest I have to admit that on anything above easy difficulty you still had to do a lot of micromanaging to over ride your pre-programmed tactics.

Despite its flaws though I really really miss the old tactics system. It was an engrossing mini game all in itself and when it did come together it gave moments of immense satisfaction. That mage saved my tank from dying because I told it to. Moreover it was an immensely ambitious undertaking by Bioware which gave players an insight into AI programming.Abandoning it feels like a retrograde step.

For some reason great games of that era had a greater impact on me than any modern game. Even though modern games are far more advanced and better in almost every way games of that era were breaking new ground. Those classic games were doing things that had never been done before and it was just awesome. I still